Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II attempted on Monday to reassure Egyptians after the recent attacks on Copts in North Sinai, stressing that the Coptic families that have fled the governorate out of fear of terrorist violence will return to the city "when the time is right." At the start of this month, the Coptic Orthodox Church announced that 143 Christian families had fled North Sinai to Ismailiya after a spate of killings of Christians by Islamist militants in the governorate.

Islamic State's branch in the Sinai Peninsula posted a video on Tuesday depicting the beheading of two men the militant Islamist group said it had found guilty of practicing witchcraft and sorcery. The video, posted on a Telegram channel often used by IS, showed the group forming a religious police unit known as the Hasbah in northern Sinai, where it has waged an insurgency for years. The rugged, thinly populated peninsula borders Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal.

Islamic State-affiliate Province of Sinai released a promotional video on Tuesday showing members of the organization carrying out what it alleges to be Hisba, or religious policing. The group claimed the footage is from locations in North Sinai, which it did not identify. Hisba is defined by religious scholars as the practice of commanding virtue and forbidding vice, professor of Islamic law professor at Al-Azhar University Ahmed Kareema told the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper. He added that Hisba should be conducted by a select few who must be efficient, fair, knowledgeable and capable, describing it as a type of guardianship falling to those who have been entrusted with religious matters.

At least 61 people have been killed in clashes between different ethnic groups in Ethiopia s Oromiya region, officials said, the latest bout of violence to highlight increasing instability in a province racked by bloody protests in 2015 and 2016. From Thursday, 29 ethnic Oromos were killed by ethnic Somali attackers in the region s Hawi Gudina and Daro Lebu districts, regional spokesman Addisu Arega Kitessa said. The violence triggered revenge attacks by ethnic Oromos in another district, resulting in the killing of 32 Somalis who were being sheltered in the area following a previous round of violence.

Egypt’s Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar order the security alert to be raised to the maximum level during Christmas holidays. Ghaffar met on Saturday evening with deputy ministers and security officials to review the security plan to ensure that the celebrations are safe.

The head of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas called Thursday for fresh protests across the world against US President Donald Trump s controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. "We demand the Islamic world make every Friday a day of anger and revolution in every capital and city until we bring down Trump s decision," Ismail Haniya said. "We ask churches, the Pope and our Christian brothers to devote their Sunday prayers to Jerusalem," he added.

Islamic leaders on Wednesday urged the world to recognise occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, as Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas warned the United States no longer had any role to play in the peace process. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan convened in Istanbul an emergency summit of the world s main pan-Islamic body, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), seeking a coordinated response to the recognition by US President Donald Trump of Jerusalem as Israel s capital.

The head of Egypt s Coptic Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II has returned to Cairo and is set to lead the church s weekly meeting on Wednesday after successfully undergoing spinal microsurgery in Germany two weeks ago, state-run news agency MENA reported. "The pope has returned to the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo after finishing a period of recovery in Vienna and was received by members of The Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church," the Church spokesman Bolis Halim said on in a statement on Tuesday evening.

A council of top Muslim clerics of Egypt s Al-Azhar, which is considered the world s highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning, has called on Arab and Muslim governments and organisations to take all necessary political and legal measures to reverse the recent decision by US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Council of Senior Scholars said that Trump s decision, which it described as "arrogant" and "reckless," will not change the reality that Jerusalem is Arab, Islamic and Palestinian.

Egypt has condemned a terrorist bomb attack on the New York metro on Monday that left three people injured. The Egyptian foreign ministry issued a statement expressing Egypt s solidarity with the government and people of the United States in the wake of the attack, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

Turkish warplanes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq on Monday and killed 29 of the group s militants, Turkey s armed forces said. The PKK fighters were believed to be preparing an attack on Turkish border posts from the Hakurk and Metina regions of northern Iraq, the army said in a written statement.

Saudi Arabia’s Embassy in Washington issued a statement in response to media reports claiming a prominent Saudi prince had purchased the world’s most expensive painting, the ‘Salvador Mundi’ depicting Christ by Leonardo Da Vinci, which sold at a record price of $450 million at an auction in November. Media reports alleged that Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud bought the painting of the Christ, which contradicts Islamic beliefs.

The Coptic Orthodox Church has announced that Pope Twadros II will return to Cairo within a week after undergoing surgery at a hospital in Germany. The official spokesman of the Church, Paul Halim, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the Pope’s health is improving and that he is expected to preside over the Christmas prayer which will either be held in the Cathedral of St. Mark in Abbasiya or at the New Administrative Capital’s church.

A criminal court in Egypt s Giza has sentenced 13 members of the terrorist group Ajnad Misr to death after the country s top Muslim legal authority consented to the punishment, following their conviction for attacking security forces. The court issued preliminary death sentences against the defendants in October and referred them the grand mufti, whose opinion is legally required in death penalty cases but is not binding.

The powerful Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called on Thursday for a new uprising against Israel after U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. "We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy,"Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

Egypt s Coptic Orthodox Church and Al-Azhar issued statements warning of the serious potential consequences of US President Donald Trump s proposed plan to recognize Jersualem as Israel s capital and to relocate the US embassy there. President Trump is set to offically recognize the city as Israel s capital on Wednesday and to announce a plan to move the US embassy there from its current location in Tel Aviv. A senior administration official said Trump would make the controversial announcement at 1 pm (1800 GMT) from the White House.

Pope Francis, speaking hours before U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement on Jerusalem, called on Wednesday for the city s "status quo" to be respected, saying new tension in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts. Trump is due on Wednesday to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the ancient city, senior U.S. officials said, a decision that upends decades of U.S. policy and risks fuelling further violence in the Middle East.

Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s main religious institution, asserted on Monday in a fatwa, or religious decree, that it is compulsory for women in Islam to wear the veil, while those who deny this are “extremist” and “abnormal”. Through a statement released by The International Electronic Center for Fatwas of Al-Azhar, the institution said the veil, or hijab, is an obligatory duty imposed by the teachings of Islam, and any debate on the topic is unacceptable.

A bomb blast killed and injured people on a bus in Syria s Homs city on Tuesday, Syrian state television said. State-run Ikhbariya TV said there was "a terrorist explosion with a bomb inside a passenger bus in the Akrama neighbourhood". No other information was immediately available.

A wave of Syrian air strikes on Sunday killed at least 25 civilians and wounded dozens across the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, a monitor said. The deadliest raids hit the town of Hammuriyeh, killing 17 civilians including six children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Administrative Control Authority (ACA) referred a preacher affiliated with Al-Azhar s Islamic Research Complex to court on Monday, on charges of inciting sectarianism. The authority said it followed videos circulating online of the preacher in Sixth October City giving a religious lesson in a mosque, where he challenged and disagreed with the view that a Muslim should be killed in case he killed a Christian. He cited the recent incident when a man stabbed and killed a Coptic cleric in Al-Marg, for which the perpetrator was sentenced to death for murder.